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Under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, qualifying borrowers are eligible to cancel their student loans after making 10 years of monthly payments.
Washington
CNN
—
President Joe Biden announced new student loan debt A total of $5.8 billion was forgiven to about 78,000 public sector employees on Thursday, and congratulatory emails will be sent to those borrowers next week.
Additionally, 380,000 borrowers who could qualify for debt forgiveness in the next year or two will also receive an email from Biden with a message saying, “Good luck!”
“If you continue your career as a public servant, you are on track to have your eligible student loans forgiven within two years through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program,” a sample email provided by the White House said. There is.
The forgiveness program, known as PSLF, covers eligible borrowers including teachers, social workers, some nurses and doctors, and the government. Lawyers – You are eligible for student loan forgiveness after making 10 years of monthly payments.
The email reveals how the Biden administration approved more student loan forgiveness than any other presidential administration during the election year, even though the Supreme Court struck down a sweeping student loan forgiveness program last year. This was sent as a reminder to voters.
The program would eliminate up to $20,000 in coverage for low- and moderate-income borrowers, providing an estimated total of $430 billion in debt relief.
Instead, the Biden administration has so far canceled a total of $144 billion in federal student loan debt for nearly 4 million borrowers, much of it through existing student loan forgiveness programs targeted at specific groups of borrowers. It is being done.
When Biden announced a debt relief package worth about $1.2 billion last month, he began sending emails to borrowers who received student loan forgiveness. Borrowers who previously received debt forgiveness may not have received an email from Biden.
PSLF was created by Congress in 2007, but it had operational problems before Biden took office. So far, only 7,000 people have received debt relief under the program, according to the White House.
In 2021, Biden introduced a temporary waiver that expanded eligibility to allow some borrowers to retroactively receive credits for past payments that did not qualify for PSLF.
The Biden administration is also conducting a one-time recount of borrowers' past payments to correct what officials called “past administrative failures.” The agency plans to complete the recount by July.
The Department of Education says a recount generally gives a credit towards forgiveness for the month a borrower made a payment, regardless of the repayment plan they were enrolled in at the time. This recount will particularly help borrowers who may have been improperly placed into extended forbearance periods by their student loan repayment companies.
What Biden has done before and after the Supreme Court decision is use existing student loan forgiveness programs to provide relief to specific groups of borrowers.
The Borrower Defense Reimbursement Program provides relief to borrowers who have been defrauded by their universities, for example. The Biden administration also created automatic forgiveness for borrowers who become completely and permanently disabled.
Additionally, about 153,000 borrowers have been granted student loan forgiveness to date under Biden's new income-driven repayment program known as SAVE (Savings for Worthy Education).below it The plan would erase any remaining federal student loan balances for people who initially borrowed $12,000 or less and made payments for at least 10 years.
These programs do not expire and can help eligible borrowers now and in the future.